The B-Class dormitory was located in the East Wing, a quiet part of the Astralis campus where weeds cracked through flagstone paths and lanterns flickered even in daylight. It felt abandoned.
Fitting, considering Class B-1 was where the Academy stuffed all its "unsorted anomalies."
Magicians with odd affinities. Spellformers who stuttered when chanting. One student, as I recalled from my own notes, literally caught fire whenever she sneezed.
And now me.
The dorm door creaked as I entered.
Inside, a small common room greeted me—plain furniture, dust-laced windows, and four students staring as I arrived.
All of them stopped talking.
The silence was thick.
I stepped forward and said, "Caelum Veritas. New addition."
One of them—a tall boy with sharp cheekbones and an alchemical tattoo glowing faintly on his neck—tilted his head.
"Let me guess," he said. "You failed the mana test?"
"Spectacularly," I said, taking the only empty seat.
The boy grinned. "You'll fit right in."
B-1 had five students, including myself.
Lira Daen, the girl who sometimes spoke in multiple voices. A failed Seer candidate, too unstable to join Divination.
Tarn Arvel, the tattooed alchemist. Good with runes, bad with authority.
Helix, a boy with no known surname, who constantly whispered numbers under his breath.
Mina Korr, a spellcrafter whose talents worked only at night—and backfired in daylight.
And now, me—Caelum Veritas. The anomaly with no mana and far too much system access.
Professor Varin, our assigned mentor, entered twenty minutes later with a scroll under one arm and a fox-shaped familiar lounging across his shoulders.
He had the half-asleep look of a man who'd been forced into this assignment against his will.
"Good morning," he muttered. "Welcome to Class B-1, also known as the Lost Track. You're here because the system doesn't know where else to put you."
I didn't miss the irony.
The real system didn't know what to do with me either.
Professor Varin unrolled the scroll and pinned it to the wall. A list of regulations, numbered 1 through 27.
Then he turned to us.
"These are the Academy's rules," he said. "Now here's the only one that matters in this wing:"
He pointed to Rule 11.
"B-Class students may craft their own curriculum with mentor oversight, provided no spell or theory poses an existential risk."
I blinked.
That line had been added as a joke. A throwaway clause in the original design—meant to explain how oddball characters like Helix survived.
But now?
Now it was a loophole.
"Let me be clear," Varin continued, rubbing his temples. "I don't care what you experiment with, as long as I don't have to clean up the mess."
Then he handed each of us a blank parchment. "Design your first week's coursework. Turn it in by dusk."
He left the room.
The fox stayed behind and began napping.
Tarn leaned toward me. "He's serious, you know."
"I assumed so."
"I once submitted a proposal to test spell inversion by feeding mana through a collapsed pipe organ. He said 'good luck' and walked out."
I raised an eyebrow. "Did it work?"
Tarn grinned. "Kind of. The basement exploded."
Lira snorted. Mina winced. Helix mumbled, "Seven-point-two meters of blast radius. Eight-point-six, acoustically."
I looked down at the blank parchment.
System Interface: Personal Curriculum EditorTruthweaver Path: Not recognized. Create new subclass?Y/N
I paused.
Then chose: Yes.
I wrote:
Curriculum Title: Linguistic Logic and Reality BindingObjective: Formulate spell theories that rely on linguistic truth rather than elemental affinity.Target: Design a rune structure capable of "sealing entropy fluctuations."Supervision: N/ARisk Level: Unclear
The moment I finished, the paper shimmered.
Accepted.
That shouldn't have happened. Not without a professor's mark. Not without oversight.
But I was still using author-level privileges, even in shadow.
[System Notice]New Path Registered: Wordbound ScholarPassive Gained: "Script Sight" – See unseen truths embedded in objects, places, and speech.Entropy Control Protocol – Access Tier 1 Granted.
So that was it.
I wasn't just rewriting the plot anymore.
I was rewriting rules.
Later that evening, I walked the eastern courtyards alone.
The cracked stones beneath my feet whispered fragments of old incantations. Words that hadn't been spoken in centuries. Ancient glyphs, now visible through my newly gained Script Sight, were etched into nearly every surface.
The Academy was built on top of something older.
Another system.
Another story.
And now, I could read it.
I sat beneath a dead tree and opened a worn notebook—sketched a few glyphs I remembered from Archive 407.
"Entropy," I wrote. "Truth. Correction."
If I could bind these together, I could create the first real defense against narrative instability. A spell to protect myself—and maybe the others—when the next breach occurred.
Because make no mistake: that first Rift hadn't been a one-off.
More were coming.
I'd destabilized the timeline.
And the plot wasn't going to forgive me.
Back in the dorm, Sylva Rhiannon waited by my door.
She didn't knock. She just stared.
"I asked the Head Archivist about you," she said.
"Oh?"
"He couldn't find your file. Said it was redacted—before you even enrolled."
I stayed silent.
She stepped closer. "You're not just strange, Caelum. You're dangerous."
I met her gaze.
"And you're still talking to me. Why?"
Her expression didn't change. "Because danger doesn't scare me. But ignorance does. And I want to know what you're hiding."
[System Update]Narrative Thread Strengthened: Sylva Rhiannon – Loyalty Potential UnlockedCharacter Alignment Shift: Neutral → CuriousPlot Divergence Path: Branching (x2)
I closed the door behind me.
Sylva wouldn't go away.
Neither would the plot.
But now… I finally had tools to fight it.